Tom Nickalls

For similarly named people, see Thomas Nicholls.

Tom Nickalls (1828–1899) was a stockjobber on the stock exchange and one of the founding members of London Rowing Club. He was known as the "king of the American railroad market" ^[1][2] after making his fortune in American railway shares.

Caricature published in Vanity Fair in 1885

Biography

Nickalls was born on 8 September 1828, the son of Patteson Nickalls (1798–1869) and Arabella née Chalk (1799–1893) and brother of Patteson Nickalls he married Emily Quihampton. As a boy he was sent to America to work for an uncle who had a livery stables on DEarborn Street in Chicago, where he gained first-hand knowledge of the surrounding terrain and an understanding of which routes would be of strategic importance for developing railways – information which proved invaluable when he returned to England work as a jobber on the London Stock Exchange. His later successes gained him the soubriquet "The Erie King",^[3] following his profitable speculation in shares of the Erie Railroad during the Erie War.

A keen sportsman and for many years a Master of the Surrey Stag Hounds,^[4][5] Tom Nickalls had a hunting lodge at Skalstugan in Sweden. In 1893, he sent four pairs of Norwegian skis ^[6] as a present to his daughter Florence and son in law William Adolf Baillie Grohman who lived in the Austrian Tyrol – one of the earliest recorded uses of skis in Austria.

Tom Nickalls died on 10 May 1899 in Surrey, United Kingdom.